About Me

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My journey with the Alaska Gateway School District began in the fall of 2012. For the first two years, I was teaching the kindergarten through 2nd grade groups in Tetlin. For the next two years, I taught the same ages at another village school in Northway. In the fall of 2016, I transferred to Tok School to teach 4th grade for two years. This year I requested the third grade, as I always enjoy taking on a new grade level of students. Before moving to Tok, my background consisted of four years living in Botswana, Africa, with my husband where I taught mostly English as second language learners in grades kindergarten through fourth. Previously, we were long time Alaska residents. Most of our years in Alaska were spent living in the interior bush community of Galena, where I taught an alternative program for teens, 7th and 8th grades, Title 1 reading, and kindergarten. For a number of years before obtaining my teacher certificate, I was part of the classified support staff in addition to serving on the local school board. It has been great to be back in Alaska, and Tok has been a good fit for us.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Week 34

 Weekly Greetings!

A large part of last week went into completing the new state required tests, and the students were all really good sports about testing for three days. When they were done, we celebrated by putting on music and tossing foam Frisbees around the room and at each other. Most of the class wanted to know how they did, but unfortunately the results will not be returned to the school until next fall. Some said the tests were easy, and some said the tests were hard...
In Science we are still studying rocks and minerals, and the class did a simulation using chocolate pieces to create sedimentary parts being crushed into metamorphic rock. Then we heated it all together to form igneous rock. The best part was at the end, when they could eat the "rocks" that were created.
On Friday, with spring in the air, the students made painted paper collages. I had a lot of painted paper scrapes for them to sort through and everyone in attendance made a colorful picture with visions of spring in Alaska. You can see the finished projects displayed outside our room.
I have been working on a final plan for an end of the year field trip with the class. Our first idea was to go to Valdez, but even though we have had a fund raising activity every month we only raised about half of what would be needed to do that. We do have enough to do a five-day education trip to Fairbanks though, and the dates will be May 8 though May 12.  I still have a few loose ends to tie up, and then I will send home all the information and permission slips.

Also, Friday will be the last day for book orders if you want to purchase any books from the order forms I sent home last week.

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown
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